Abstract:
The following report contains frequency and percentages representing information collected from the SUNY Learning Network (SLN) – CourseSpace Faculty Online Survey for fall semester 2006. The survey sought to obtain general information regarding online or web-enhanced faculty’s experiences developing, managing, teaching and assessing their fall courses. The survey
consisted of quantifiable items and 5 open narrative items. An analysis of narrative questions (i.e., open responses), are not included within this preliminary report.
Between December 14, 2006 and February 15, 2007, 261 questionnaires were electronically collected. Several surveys were submitted with partially missing data regarding specific questions. These surveys were included in the final sample of 261 and were analyzed in this report. Files containing partial data account for the changing sample size represented in frequency tables: 6, 14 & 14a. Please note that surveys containing partial data files (i.e., incidences that indicated no answer was provided), are categorized in all frequency tables as ‘Missing – Not Answered.’
Special consideration is relevant for survey items 14 and 14a due to the nature of the condition causing the noticeable elevated rates of Missing data. In these items, the survey was constructed using a branching technique that allowed us to direct respondents to specific survey items based upon each respondent’s previous reply. In this particular case respondents were
directed to either survey item 14 or 14a depending on the reply given to survey item 5, which asked: Did you teach this course in a completely online format? Faculty who replied: Yes - were treated as SLN faculty and were routed to:
- Item 14: If you have ever taught this course in the classroom, how would you compare your current online students' performance to the performance of your previous classroom students?
While faculty who replied: No – were treated as CourseSpace faculty and sent to:
- Item 14a: If you previously taught this course without using webenhancements how would you compare the performance of your current students to the performance of your previous students (i.e.in the version of the course without web-enhancements)?
Thus, respondents routed to item 14 and were not given the opportunity to answer item 14a and vice-versa. The faculty survey was created and collected online using the commercial software package licensed by WebSurveyor Corporation. Participants consisted of SUNY system faculty teaching online courses via SLN or CourseSpace during the fall academic term of 2006. These faculty members received broadcast emails asking each to complete and submit an online survey for each online / web-enhanced course they were teaching. The analysis of survey responses were conducted using SPSS 15.0
software.
